Farhana Huq: Creating Economic Opportunities for Women!

Farhana Huq’s decision not to pursue a lucrative Wall Street career has made all the difference!

by Deborah Burstyn
SF BAWJ Staff Writer

Farahana Huq

Her aunt’s desperation is what Farhana Huq recalls. Her mother’s youngest sister’s arranged marriage had ended in divorce, leaving the mother of three adrift in a new country with no means of support. Huq, a teen-ager, watched in horror as her once-proud aunt veered from the charity of relatives to welfare.

Then something wonderful happened. Her aunt began working in a friend’s beauty salon and soon opened a salon of her own.

It was a lesson that Farhana Huq never forgot and prompted this quiet daughter of Asian immigrants to override her parents’ wishes. Instead of using her Economics and   Philosophy degrees from Tufts University to launch herself into a lucrative Wall Street career, Huq instead headed west to found C.E.O. Women…Creating Economic Opportunities for Women.

Filling a Need to Help Immigrant and Refugee Women

Inspired by the diversity in the Bay Area, Huq created the organization to help low-income immigrant and refugee women.  Her goal…to help them support themselves in their new country by capitalizing on the American dream: starting their own businesses.

In the brief time since Huq launched the non-profit in 2002, several hundred women have completed C.E.O. Women’s unique 16-week entrepreneurship training program.  The program is a combination crash course in English communications and small business ownership. And with their new video based Grand Café curriculum, they hope to reach 1000 women per year! 

First Steps to C.E.O. Women

After college, Huq volunteered with AmeriCorps/VISTA and chose a position in San Rafael.  She was working in a program that became the basis for C.E.O. Women. But the program ended.

Farhana congratulates Beatriz Mena, recipient of a Venture Fund grant award.

Huq began to contact women in high-level corporate positions all over the Bay area seeking funding. Once in frustration she confided to one of them that she wanted to give up and just get a job.

The woman, Lata Krishnan, the founder of a semi-conductor business, said, “You would be doing the world a great injustice if you got a job doing something else.  Here, I will be your first investor,” Huq recalls. And she gave me $1,000 and helped me write a business plan.

In spite of her preference for staying low profile, the success of C.E.O. Women has made Huq an internationally-recognized champion for women and their economic independence.

In addition to many awards, Huq now receives invitations to speak and participate in workshops around the world on issues involving women, work and sustainability. But Huq acknowledges that it was not long ago that she was struggling to get C.E.O. Women off the ground.

Staying Focused on Her Passion…Launching C.E.O. Women!

“It took me six months just to get a meeting with the head of adult education in Oakland. I just kept calling until they were sick of me and had to see me to get rid of me,” she recalls. “People who know me tell me that I am very strategic and focused.”

“A lot of people are fearful of doing new things,” Huq says, “But you can’t be. Look at C.E.O. Women. I started this by working out of my bedroom in a tiny apartment with no health insurance, no salary for three years and only $1000 in funding.”

“Now here we are,” she pauses to gesture around her Oakland office. “We are helping so many women and pioneering a network of new women-owned small businesses.”

Photo of Farhan Huq by Kathi O’Leary, SF BAWJ Staff Photographer!

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Posted on 23. Nov, 2009 by SFWJ in Bay Area Spotlight

Tags: feature, Non-Profit, success stories